1.   A study last month from Amsterdam found that depression substantially increases the risk of cardiac death.

2.   Depression increases the likelihood that a serious physical illness will develop or get worse.

3.   It is not so much that illness causes depression as that depression increases the risk of illness, functional decline and even symptoms of dementia.

4.   Last month, scientists published compelling evidence that major depression triples the chance of cardiac death, and even minor depression increases the risk by more than half.

5.   Those studies have generally shown that depression increases the likelihood of death within a certain time period.